Coinbase’s new contract with the United States government is approximately forty times larger than its previous agreement.
The Department of Homeland Security’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement department will receive blockchain analytics tools from Coinbase. The crypto exchange has also offered software to the Secret Service of the United States and the Internal Revenue Service.
According to the Federal Procurement Data System, the Immigration and Customs Enforcement branch of the United States Department of Homeland Security has awarded a $1.36 million contract to cryptocurrency exchange giant Coinbase for “business application” and “application development software” services.
The new contract represents Coinbase’s largest federal contract to date. The agreement, which was inked on Thursday, is valued around forty times more than Coinbase’s previous contract with the Department of Homeland Security.
I missed this in procurement feed yesterday, but cryptocurrency exchange platform Coinbase has a new award with ICE which is either 15x or nearly 50x as large as its previous award, depending on how you count.
It is Coinbase’s largest fed contract.https://t.co/B4IsabH4sw
1/2 pic.twitter.com/zAwJILS0X1
— Jack Poulson (@_jack_poulson) September 18, 2021On August 9 of this year, the ICE paid Coinbase $29,000 for forensics software, according to public records. According to a contract document dated August 3, the contract was awarded to Coinbase on the grounds that the company is “the only vendor who can properly deliver the services sought by the agency,” according to the document.”
There are few specifics on what the ICE plans to use Coinbase software for at this time. Later in the same paper, it is stated, “Because this requirement is LAW ENFORCEMENT SENITIVE[sic], only the most basic information shall be made available to the public.”
The Internal Revenue Service (ICE) is not the first government body to solicit Coinbase’s services. Coinbase said last year that it wished to sell analytics tools to two divisions of the United States government: the Drug Enforcement Administration and the Internal Revenue Service.
A number of analytics tools, including “Coinbase Analytics,” which was previously known as Neutrino, are being considered by the IRS to aid in the capture of blockchain-savvy tax evaders. Neutrino was acquired by Coinbase in 2019 for a total of $13.5 million.
Considering that members of Neutrino were related to an Italian group called Hacking Team, which sold spyware to authoritarian regimes in countries such as Saudi Arabia, Sudan, and Venezuela, it was a contentious acquisition at the time of its acquisition.
Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong later voiced his remorse with the acquisition and fired some of the company’s more questionable members of the team. Coinbase later acquired analytics software that has agreements with both the Secret Service and the Internal Revenue Service.
Currently, Coinbase is negotiating multimillion-dollar contracts with the federal government. Move over, Chainalysis: it appears that the United States government has found a new favourite blockchain business.
